Autumn Gardening Tips - Ground Cover, Leaves & Wildlife-Friendly Ideas

[00:00:05]Hello. Welcome to Gardener's World and what is a surprisingly flower-filled long meadow. Of course, these cosmos and dahlias will go on flowering until the first frost comes. But because they come from near the equator, they're not bothered by the decreasing light and the shortening days. All they want is enough warmth. And they'll go on producing those flowers for at least another month yet. But you can help them. And the secret is to deadhead remorselessly. At least once a day, just go out and find a fading flower or one that's completely over, cut it off, and that will stimulate new buds. And you can see here that there are lots and lots of buds waiting to open.

[00:00:46]So just keep deadheading, hoping there's no frost, and the flowers will keep coming.

[00:00:53]This week, Joe meets one of his comic heroes, Griff Rhys [music] Jones, and is taken on a tour of his garden.

[00:00:59]One of the things about having a big garden is you can plant things and forget about them. You know, you're walking around the corner and, you know, >> [music] >> 2 years later and you go, "Whoa, look at the size of that. Wow."

[00:01:10]And Carol continues her journey of botanical discovery.

[00:01:14]This week, I'm looking at leaves.

[00:01:17]Leaves are amazing. Their diversity of size, shape, texture, and arrangement is seemingly endless.

[00:01:27]And I'm going to [music] be moving a plant that has dramatically outgrown its position, as well as making some [music] metal supports to hold up next year's large plants.

[00:01:39]Come on.

[00:01:44]>> [music] >> 6 months ago, this wildlife garden was certainly wild and certainly no garden at all. It was abandoned.

[00:02:03]But I've put in a pond, we've got a border designed to attract as many bees and insects as possible. And the general idea is to get as rich and as varied amount of wildlife as possible into a space that is also good for human beings. Also a nice garden. Because the two needn't be, in fact, shouldn't be incompatible. Now, I've extended it out and dug a border along here, which was just a rough verge under the hedge. But what happens if you if you dig a border like this and don't plant it? It very quickly will fill up with weeds. In fact, you can see on this side, which has only been dug a week or so, already the weed seedlings are starting and by next spring, that would be just a thicket.

[00:02:45]Now, to encourage wildlife, I want to get cover.

[00:02:49]Ground cover. And ground cover does a number of things.

[00:02:52]It's really good cover for small mammals, for insects, for birds that get in amongst it.

[00:02:59]And not only suppressing weeds, but it can look good through which other plants can grow.

[00:03:05]I've got a selection of really good ground cover plants here. Nothing fancy, nothing difficult to buy, but they do the job and they do it well for both wildlife and gardeners. Now, to start with, perhaps the most basic of the lot, common ivy, Hedera helix.

[00:03:24]Ivy grows very well horizontally as well as vertically.

[00:03:28]And of course, the beauty of it is it will grow in really quite deep, dry shade. So I can put it quite far back in the border and underneath these Pyracantha. And you can see the berries are beginning to turn color.

[00:03:42]These will turn a much more aggressive orange as the weather gets a bit colder.

[00:03:47]Now, I've got two types of vinca.

[00:03:49]I've got Vinca major here with the familiar blue periwinkle flower.

[00:03:55]And this will grow fairly substantial.

[00:03:57]It forms sort of low, curving hummocks that will spread out. Really good at covering ground. And also particularly good for wildlife because there's a room for sort of animals as big as a hedgehog to get in underneath it.

[00:04:12]And then Vinca minor. Now, this is one of my favorites. This is Vinca minor atropurpurea.

[00:04:18]And the flowers are lovely plum purple.

[00:04:21]So really good plants. Tough, they'll grow in shade, they cover the ground, and they're pretty.

[00:04:27]If you're buying ground cover plants, you need enough to cover the ground. It makes good sense to buy small plants and buy a batch of them. Buy half a dozen of those. Often is much better value than buying one or two larger ones.

[00:04:44]Now, don't mind me, Nigel.

[00:04:48]We'll plant around you, shall we?

[00:04:51]Don't lie there. You're not meant to be lying on the border.

[00:04:55]Oh, well. I suppose he'll suppress the weeds.

[00:04:58]This is Euphorbia amygdaloides robbiae. It forms a fairly dense canopy.

[00:05:05]And that stops the light getting through and suppresses the weeds.

[00:05:08]Now, this is a geranium that I've not grown before.

[00:05:13]Hardy geranium, of course.

[00:05:15]It's geranium macrorrhizum 'Bevan's Variety'.

[00:05:19]And the great thing about it, as well as growing in dry shade and having lovely little white flowers, it's got aromatic leaves.

[00:05:29]Almost fruity.

[00:05:31]It's deciduous.

[00:05:32]And hardy geraniums are really tough and flexible.

[00:05:38]Right, I can start to plant these up.

[00:05:45]There's a pattern building up of spacing the plants out, giving them room to expand.

[00:05:51]They will not suppress the weeds for the first year or so.

[00:05:55]So they'll have to be either weeded or mulched well [music] in between. And then, after about a year, then they'll get really well established [music] and they'll do the job for you.

[00:06:05]And it is worth just teasing the roots a bit. Don't try to unravel them.

[00:06:10]Just break them.

[00:06:19]Just because these [music] are generally tough plants, doesn't mean that they shouldn't be planted properly, watered in well, and we'll have really good ground cover that will look good and be great for wildlife.

[00:06:33]And the foliage will form a lovely mat across the ground.

[00:06:39]And talking of foliage, Carol, who's been looking at the botany of plants over the last few weeks, has now arrived at their leaves.

[00:06:57]For [music] centuries, we've been seeking to unravel the mysteries of plants, to unlock their secrets and enable us to have a better understanding of how they grow.

[00:07:08]>> [music] >> As gardeners, we play a small but important role in maintaining the diversity of plant life on our planet.

[00:07:15][music] Yeah, we grow plants because they're beautiful and for our enjoyment. [music] But if we learn more about their botany, it can help us all become much better gardeners.

[00:07:31]Over the last few weeks, we've looked inside [music] seeds to see how they germinate. We've learned how roots soak up food and water >> [music] >> and how stems transport them to every part of the plant.

[00:07:44]This week, I'm looking at leaves.

[00:07:48]>> [music] >> Leaves are fascinating. They're essential to a plant's growth, harnessing sunlight to provide the plant with food.

[00:07:58]They've adapted to survive in all kinds of hostile environments.

[00:08:05]Some even protect themselves from being eaten.

[00:08:10]Leaves are amazing. Their diversity of size, shape, texture, and arrangement is seemingly endless.

[00:08:21]Conifers are amongst the most primitive of plants. Their leaves are reduced to what we call needles. These allow them to put up with the most exposed conditions and drought because they hardly transpire at all.

[00:08:35]Other plants actually adapt their leaves to become reservoirs. Lots of succulents with these fat leaves store water inside them. And even this crassula with the tiny, tiny little leaves, each one of those is a teeny little reservoir.

[00:08:55]Leaves are like factories. Inside, [music] they contain structures called chloroplasts, which have a unique talent.

[00:09:04]They bond carbon dioxide from the air with hydrogen from water >> [music] >> and energy from sunlight and turn it into carbohydrates, which feed the plant.

[00:09:19]This fascinating process is called [music] photosynthesis.

[00:09:25]The byproduct of this process is something which is essential to us. It's oxygen.

[00:09:36]Without photosynthesis, life on Earth wouldn't be possible.

[00:09:41]However, this miracle of leaves doesn't end there.

[00:09:48]Leaf cells can actually change themselves into root cells. All you do is chop up your leaf.

[00:09:57]With this begonia leaf, I'm just doing it into squares.

[00:10:03]And then you take each piece, bit of gritty compost, really nice free-draining stuff, and you make little trenches into which you push these small sections of leaf.

[00:10:18]And you must ensure the point at which you cut across the vein is in intimate contact with that compost because that's the point at which all the hormones are concentrated, and that's the point where it has the greatest ability to change from being a leaf cell into a root cell.

[00:10:38]When a leaf is detached from the parent plant, the hormones instruct its stem cells to change identity and start making root cells.

[00:10:47]It's a clever way by which plants like begonia and streptocarpus can increase their chances of survival.

[00:10:55]Eventually, after a few weeks, tiny tiny new leaves will begin to emerge, new shoots and small roots, too.

[00:11:07]These leaves are so clever.

[00:11:11]In the autumn, leaves of deciduous trees [music] frequently dazzle us with their vibrant colors.

[00:11:17]And this color change is a sign that a tree is [music] getting ready for winter.

[00:11:23]Chloroplasts in the leaves contain chlorophyll. That's what [music] gives leaves their green color.

[00:11:29]But in autumn, as temperatures drop and the days get shorter, the chlorophyll gets broken down as the tree reabsorbs [music] as many nutrients as it can.

[00:11:39]This food is stored within the body of the tree through winter until the spring when new leaves emerge.

[00:11:47]In the autumn, any remaining pigments that were previously hidden suddenly appear in spectacular fashion.

[00:11:56]Leaves are simply astounding. The things they can do and the way they work is almost unbelievable.

[00:12:03]Take photosynthesis. I mean, what a perfectly choreographed process that is.

[00:12:10]And some plants even go a step further.

[00:12:13]This nasturtium is hydrophobic.

[00:12:16]That means when you run water on its leaves, it falls right off. So, it cleans the whole surface of the leaf, which just means that photosynthesis is even more efficient.

[00:12:29]It's just beautiful.

[00:12:32]Next week, we're going to be looking at the private parts of plants, their flowers.

[00:12:38]Meanwhile, I'm having fun with this.

[00:12:47]Of course, at this time of year, nothing in the garden is better than really good autumnal foliage, and nothing is performing its autumnal foliage better here at Long Meadow than this rhododendron luteum.

[00:13:02]It's got lovely delicate yellow flowers in May and June, and now this rage of color. Absolutely fantastic.

[00:13:17]Now, this is a plant that is doing exactly what I'd expect it to do, but in the wrong place.

[00:13:24]This is hemp agrimony, Eupatorium cannabinum, and it's seeded itself in amongst the hostas and loves it. It's growing superbly. Now, I like it. It's fantastic native plant. It grows by the side of rivers and streams, very good by the side of a pond, but not here because it's out of proportion with all the hostas and is also beginning to overwhelm them.

[00:13:50]So, I want to move it to the grass borders.

[00:13:57]Now, obviously, I could have made life easier for myself by cutting the Eupatorium right down [music] to the ground.

[00:14:04]But the whole point of this exercise is to see what it looks like fully grown.

[00:14:10]And that's one of the benefits of this time of year. You can move plants and get [music] the scale right.

[00:14:18]Oh, here we come.

[00:14:25]There we go. I don't even know if I'm strong enough to lift it.

[00:14:28]>> [laughter] >> There we go.

[00:14:38]Immediately, [music] I can see that the balance of the planting is better. Nothing wrong with the Eupatorium. I like it, but it was in the wrong place.

[00:14:50]Not the most elegant way of moving plants, but I think it will work.

[00:15:03]Right.

[00:15:04]Let's see if it likes its new home.

[00:15:06]These are the grass borders, and of course, everything here is big.

[00:15:09]This time of year, it's absolutely at its best. It's tall, everything's vertical, it's not spreading sideways, and I think the hemp agrimony will look good here. But I won't know till I see.

[00:15:21]I've dug a hole. I think it's big enough.

[00:15:24]All right, let's get this up. I'm doing my back in forever.

[00:15:30]Here we go.

[00:15:32]There we go.

[00:15:33]What does that look like?

[00:15:36]Well, it certainly doesn't overpower its neighbors.

[00:15:39]And the soil here in the grass borders is heavy clay, and the hemp agrimony will love that. If you've got clay, use the fact that it's slow to dry out and grow plants that like the damp.

[00:15:52]October is really good for moving plants, particularly herbaceous perennials.

[00:15:58]There is warmth in the soil, so the roots can start to grow.

[00:16:03]When you move a plant, it's important to to work the soil in right in and round the roots.

[00:16:11]Right, now that I'm happy with the proportions of the plant, the height that it's reached, the space that it's taking, its relationship to its neighbors around it, I'm going to cut it to the ground.

[00:16:26]The reason for not leaving it to die back naturally is that I've moved it, so I've given the roots a big trauma.

[00:16:33]And to give the plant a fighting chance, those roots shouldn't have to do too much work.

[00:16:39]Right.

[00:16:40]So, a really generous soak now, and that should get used to its new home.

[00:16:47]The roots will grow over the next month or two, so next spring, it'll be in a good state for the shoots to come up and hardly notice it's even been moved, but I will. It'll look a lot better here in its new position.

[00:17:01]Now, Joe has been to see one of his youthful heroes, a man who made him and all of us laugh a great deal.

[00:17:10]But actually, not someone who you would necessarily think of as being a gardener.

[00:17:22]Griff Rhys Jones kept me so entertained during my youth with [music] classic British comedy like Not the 9 O'Clock News and Alas Smith and Jones. Now, we know he's a very funny man. He's a very bright man, too. But is he a good gardener?

[00:17:46]So, Griff, you grow a lot of veggies, then? Oh, we do. Well, I mean, Joe, my wife, is fanatical about her veg. This this this little plot here, this potager, controls our whole calendar.

[00:17:59]We have asparagus, we have broad beans, we have artichokes, we have the extraordinarily beautiful and delicious pumpkins called Crown Prince. Have you ever >> Oh, yes, delicious. Absolutely fantastic, but it does mean that you can't necessarily go somewhere You can't leave them.

[00:18:15]As you will find as we travel around, our private domain here, the there is box everywhere. So, this is the beginning of the sort of obsession with formality that runs around this whole place. Okay.

[00:18:33]This up here, this is my home oak avenue. See, I looked at a lot of books.

[00:18:39]Did you? I was wondering because where you get your ideas from, whether you have them within you or whether they bringing out. I saw it in a book and I thought, "Oh, I like that." So, I'll have one of those. See, the thing about hedges and growing things like this, which I'm only just kind of saying this to warn everybody who's thinking, "I'll do this." is that you spend the rest of your life going out and clipping, maintaining, collecting. You know, what do you do with it all? It just grows and grows and grows.

[00:19:06]What we try to do is compartmentalize a bit. This is beautiful in here, Griff.

[00:19:11]Wow.

[00:19:14]It's really contrasting to to all the hedges, if you don't mind me saying.

[00:19:19]There's lots of roses, and it's very cottagey. It's beautiful.

[00:19:24]So, the pergola gave us a bit of height um and allows these uh these really beautiful old-fashioned sort of climbing and shrub roses to come up here. What's fascinating is about is what will grow here because I think if you move into a an agricultural field, you're left with a lot of nitrogen in the field. So, everything's very lush. Yeah.

[00:19:50]You're imposing yourself onto the plot, aren't you?

[00:19:53]>> Nature is a form of disorder. Man is about rationality and lines. So, if you make a very structured rational mathematical pattern and then allow the profusion to go through it. But I think a lot of people in a garden like this in a very rural setting [music] would be tempted to just be a bit haphazard and a bit all over the place. And I really like the way you've imposed [music] it. Do you think it's quite a male thing?

[00:20:17]>> Maybe. The truth is the house, which we'll come to up here, is was built [music] in 1700. That's what gardens were like. They were not places that people joined with nature. They were places which they built to separate [music] themselves slightly from nature originally. Yes. Uh and where they showed the sort of the control that they could have.

[00:20:42]Beautiful view, [music] isn't it? Well, I sat down and and did we did work it out so that we had these sort of, you know, back and forth bits. And everything is supposed to be designed to be low maintenance.

[00:20:54]Okay, so how's that? Is that a reality?

[00:20:57]Is that >> No. No, no, no. Because it's like filling your plate with food, you know, it feels a great excitement as you're putting it on the plate and then you realize you're going to eat all this.

[00:21:05]And in fact, one of the good fun things about having a big garden is you can plant things and forget about them. Forget, you know, instead of standing over a small garden you don't plant something and you stand over and say, "Come on. Come on." And then if you've got If you've got a big garden, you know, you're walking around the corner and, you know, 2 years later you go, "Whoa, LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT.

[00:21:24]WOW."

[00:21:29]THIS is my new project.

[00:21:31]New project? [music] >> Yeah, we've got new projects on the go all the time.

[00:21:34]Isn't that rose fantastic?

[00:21:38]And this is exactly what I mean. I come in here and I go, "WHOA, WHAT'S THAT?"

[00:21:42]>> [laughter] >> BUT WHAT I'M GOING TO DO IS CUT A hole in my hedge there. Okay.

[00:21:47]>> gate, another vista. And then I'm going to I I Are you lining up with that? I'm going to put a path to take us right the way through down there. Probably two more borders in there. And these are the beginnings of a little sort of provencal box border here.

[00:22:05]Have you always [music] gardened, Ingres? As a child did you garden?

[00:22:08]Gardens are something But you need your own garden.

[00:22:11]>> like radio three that you need to grow into. And, you know, we don't we [music] don't need to worry that young kids, you know, are not spending a huge amount of time gardening.

[00:22:20]They come to it naturally. You know, it's it's fair enough to say I don't want to go to Glastonbury, but anymore I did. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:22:27]But I don't really want to go there anymore. I'd rather be [music] in my garden.

[00:22:42]I get the sense that Griff and his wife Jo have had a lot of fun making this garden. And it's an incredibly confident design. There's lots of structure here.

[00:22:53]There's lots of straight lines. There's a lot of formality. But the garden [music] doesn't feel overly formal. In fact, it feels the opposite. It feels really relaxed and it feels like it's been beautifully gardened as well. But they had a vision and 20 years later they've got a fabulous garden. And that's the sign of some true [music] gardeners.

[00:23:19]I do completely agree with Griff that a little bit of order, man-made formality, which then can contain exuberance is the perfect mix for a garden. But even exuberance needs a little bit of support from time to time.

[00:23:47]These rods are really good bits of gardening kit.

[00:23:53]Some years ago we got fed up with buying supports for plants cuz we just needed more and more.

[00:24:01]And also using bamboos and twine just never really looks very good.

[00:24:06]So, we developed a technique of making our own using steel rods. Now, this is 6 mm steel rod. And you can buy it from a steel stockholder. That may sound a fairly obscure thing, but actually, if you look them up you'll be surprised at how many there are because the building industry uses this for reinforcing concrete. This is a 2 and 1/2 m length.

[00:24:30]And experience has shown that this is the shortest you want to get.

[00:24:34]And 6 mm piece like this costs under £2.

[00:24:38]So, the first thing to do is find a curve, or it could be a square if you wanted, that you can bend it around. And if you've got one, a tree is absolutely ideal.

[00:24:48]Now, either side of the tree hold it like that and then slowly bend it round. And it's not difficult. 6 mm does well. Now, this is the moment of truth you see if it's equal and it's not.

[00:24:59]Not the end of the world. So, what you have is a sort of croquet hoop.

[00:25:02]Now, the clever bit.

[00:25:04]You need a couple of boards. Scaffolding board will do fine of any kind.

[00:25:10]Then put your bent croquet hoop over the top.

[00:25:19]Stand on it to hold it in position and then just bend it upwards.

[00:25:30]And there is your plant support.

[00:25:35]They'll last forever.

[00:25:37]They're easy to store. They won't break.

[00:25:40]You put them in.

[00:25:41]They disappear into the foliage very quickly.

[00:25:43]>> [music] >> You can push them in and then raise them up a bit as the plant grows. You can make them to any size or shape you want.

[00:25:51]They're completely customizable.

[00:25:56]And using them is the easiest thing in the world.

[00:26:00]Sorry to disturb you.

[00:26:08]The two straight ends simply stick in the ground. So, you've got a dahlia flopping all over the place here.

[00:26:14]This is Rosa Revela.

[00:26:17]And it's been reveling this year like nobody's business.

[00:26:22]And you can adjust them. You don't want the plant to just feel as though it's cramped up, but at the same time it wants to be held up, particularly this time of year when you want to enjoy every flower possible for as long as possible. And this is easy as that. So, I reckon that's a job you could perhaps do this weekend.

[00:26:39]And here are some others.

[00:26:44]Forget-me-nots set seed profusely, but not always where you want them to grow and flower >> [music] >> next spring.

[00:26:52]However, don't waste them.

[00:26:54]Dig them up, put them into pots or seed trays, put them to one side, and then when you're ready to plant them out, you can do so later in autumn.

[00:27:04]Although your fig tree [music] may be smothered in green fruits, none of them will ripen.

[00:27:10]>> [music] >> And any bigger than a pea should be removed so that they don't sap the tree's strength and possibly affect next summer's harvest.

[00:27:20]And the fruits that you will eat next year are tiny pea-sized ones growing in the axil between the leaf and the stem.

[00:27:31]If you sow some broad beans now, you can get an extra early harvest next spring.

[00:27:38]If you've got free draining soil, you can do this direct [music] into your veg plot. But if like me, you're growing on heavy clay, it's better [music] to grow them in pots of compost.

[00:27:50]Put them somewhere protected, water them, and let the plants grow over winter ready to put outside [music] next spring.

[00:28:09]It may be autumn, but when the sun shines the garden is still looking pretty good, I think.

[00:28:14]And let's hope there's plenty of life in it left for a few more weeks yet.

[00:28:18]But that's it.

[00:28:20]I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

[00:28:23]Come on.

[00:28:34]Come on, right.

[00:28:36]Come on.

[00:28:37]Good boy.

[00:28:39]>> [music]